


Enharmonic Interval

by Panny



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Getting Together, Hurt Bruce Wayne, Hurt Clark Kent, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-07 05:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/pseuds/Panny
Summary: Bruce Wayne is a hard man to know by design and Clark isn't always sure it's worth the effort to try. But after a mission goes sideways, their relationship develops a new complication that may not leave them with any choice in the matter.





	Enharmonic Interval

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Clark set the plane gently to the ground, easing his hands away from shallow, finger-sized dents in the metal as soon as he was sure it was stable. They were the only evidence of a momentary, mid-air slip in concentration – ultimately harmless, but he found himself wincing anyway. A cheer surged on the wave of a collective intake of breath and Clark let the sound of the crowd’s relief break against him as he reached out for the source of his distraction. It was still there, the familiar sound, one that he now half-consciously searched for in the wake of any emergency – an even, steady heartbeat that had stood out amongst the panic and fear of other onlookers.

It was still there even later, after the passengers had been safely unloaded, after Superman’s sudden departure, after the crowd started to disperse with no new developments left to hold them. It was still there when Clark Kent at last walked away from the scene, messenger bag bouncing loosely at his side as he took care not to hurry on his way. Diana stood a modest two blocks away from the averted crash landing, casually fashionable and still managing to make Clark feel inherently underdressed in comparison. An effortless smile broke across her face as he drew within speaking distance and he was helpless to do anything but duck his head and return it.

“If you’re here to catch a flight,” he said, “I think you just missed it.”

“I was hoping to visit a friend while I was in the city, but he seems to have flown off on his own again.”

“Unbelievable. The nerve of some people.” Clark let his smile bloom wider, encouraged by the way Diana’s eyes seemed to glitter in the light – mutual joy found in the simple pleasure of having someone else to play along. “I don’t suppose you’d accept my company in his stead?”

“Only if you have a drink with me. I haven’t been truly drunk since I left Themyscira.”

“I haven’t been drunk ever.”

She clapped him on the shoulder. “All the more reason to try.”

 

Clark’s beer had grown warm, which didn’t do much for the taste, but any genuine intention either of them might have had to drink had been left behind three baskets of nachos and two conversation topics ago. Talking to Diana was…nice. Easy. A perfect microcosm of everything he'd hoped for after waking up from death to find that, for the first time in his life, he wasn't  _alone_. Returning to Metropolis, to the constant cup and ball trick that was shuffling between Clark Kent and Superman, had almost hurt, even if he knew he should have been grateful for all the effort that had gone into making sure those identities were still miraculously feasible. And he was grateful, had told Bruce as much every time he'd asked for Clark's signature on paperwork that should never have been his responsibility.  It was just harder to wait for things when he could see them within possibility. Things like stepping into the finished Hall of Justice for the first time or being able to use the new communication network Bruce and Vic had discussed or having a team he could talk to without having to hide any part of who he was. Or still feeling like he could have that last part even when the world wasn't ending.

Diana had gone out for drinks with him, was laughing with him, and it was nice. And Clark, unable to let go of the questions that had sparked the moment he’d first heard that steady heartbeat, couldn’t help ruining it. “So, what really brings you here, Diana?”

She raised an eyebrow, fingertip idly circling the lip of her own half-full bottle. “I can’t just want to see how you’re doing?”

“Long trip just to say ‘hi’. We’ve got phones for that.”

“If it had been an emergency, I would have used other means.” Diana’s finger paused, her eyes rising to meet Clark’s, hard and set in a way that made him suddenly want to sit straighter, stiff against the back of his chair. Those were Wonder Woman’s eyes. “But you’re not wrong. I have some business to follow up on on this side of the Atlantic.”

Clark swallowed, carefully holding back the way that his fingers wanted to tighten over the neck of his bottle. There hadn’t been many League-level threats since Steppenwolf; Arthur hadn’t even told them when Atlantis was trying to wage war on the surface world until long after the crisis was over. They’d all been cautious about relying too much on each other – had understood why they’d have to be even before Bruce had laid it out in front of them in cold, hard logic. If anyone figured out how to reliably summon all of the world’s active metahumans to a single location, they were in trouble. They couldn’t afford to assume that Lex Luthor had been the only one paying attention. “Do you expect your business to bring you to Metropolis?”

“Not yet. It might be a bit more personal.” Clark swallowed the urge to ask further. He trusted Diana to tell him if it was something he should have been worried about. If she was playing this one close to the vest...she must have had her reasons. It wasn't like she was Batman. Diana, as if reading his mind: “Have you spoken to Bruce recently?”

“Not - uh. Not really.” Clark had to almost physically resist the urge to cringe back from his own answer. Not a lie, entirely - 'speaking' wasn't how he'd have defined their last run in. Bruce had been…kind to him since he’d come back. Outrageously generous in a way that Clark didn’t know how to handle – investing personal time and resources to bring Clark Kent back to life in heavy stacks of legal documents, subtly redirecting the attentions of the media circus that had sprung up around Superman’s return with a practiced hand that Clark was almost certain he wasn’t meant to notice, saving his mother’s house by buying the damn bank. As dizzying and overwhelming as seeing Bruce in action had felt, as much as Clark had at times resented the lack of time and space to relearn the pieces of his life that had moved on without him, he was keenly aware of how much harder – how impossible all of it would have been if Bruce hadn’t stepped up. Whatever ugliness had been between them before, Clark owed this man. More than he could ever hope to repay.

But Bruce, for whatever revelations he had made, for however much he believed in the League and what they could accomplish, was still Batman and Batman had boundaries. He had drawn one of these boundaries very clearly around Gotham, had been uncharacteristically straightforward in his request that they all leave the city to him. It had been met with its fair share of well-intentioned uncertainty and annoyed eyerolling, but as far as Clark was aware, everyone had been willing enough to respect Bruce’s wishes on the matter. Clark had been no different in that respect – how could he be? He allowed Bruce to set what terms he needed on their tentative alliance, gave him the distance and privacy he clearly expected as he steadily pulled back from Clark’s life with much less grandeur than when he’d entered into it, and tried not to push where he wasn’t wanted. He didn’t bother Bruce with situations that didn’t truly require Batman’s resources. He didn’t eavesdrop, was careful to keep his super senses from seeking him out when he knew the attention would be unwelcome. And as long as the Bat-Signal lit the sky, he stayed out of Gotham, whatever appeared to be going on across the water. It had been harder than he’d expected.

It wasn’t like he’d been oblivious to Gotham’s problems before, even if he hadn’t taken the stories of bat-themed cryptids all that seriously until Superman became a solidified part of his own life. But he had never focused on them like this before. It was hard to glean partial information from the news, to see the stories of exploding penguins and crime lords with mind control and shapeshifting monsters made out of clay and to not know, not be able to ask for more than that. It was hard to think that he might be sitting on his ass while Bruce stood alone against the dark and if the worst happened, he might not even know until it hit the morning news circuit. It was hard to think that Bruce might prefer it that way.

And then Vicki Vale had stood outside of Arkham Asylum in the wake of a mass riot, reporting that Batman had gone in alone. That he had ordered the police to wait outside. That he hadn’t come back.

Clark was flying to Gotham almost before he’d realized that he’d come to the decision to do so.

Bruce had been alive, relievingly. Maybe not fine, but not in the worst shape Clark had seen him in either. Which left Clark, in Gotham, where he wasn’t supposed to be, for the sole purpose of rescuing someone who’d felt the situation was adequately handled. To say that Bruce had been displeased by his offer of help was an understatement. To say that Clark had reacted well to what felt like an unfair upbraiding in the heat of the moment was equally inaccurate. Hindsight hadn’t much helped matters. He was still mad at Bruce, mad at himself, stung by the feeling that, for whatever progress they’d made with the team, Clark and Bruce hadn’t moved forward. They weren’t any less petty than they had been when they’d met at the party, any more functional than when Luthor had played them both like fiddles. The thought of admitting as much to Diana was mortifying. “Is he already in on this?”

“I have need of certain resources,” Diana said. “Whether I will need his aid directly remains to be seen as much as whether I will have need of yours. If there’s something you need to know about, I’ll tell you, Kal.”

Clark tried not to show his relief that Bruce was just as in the dark as he was. It was comforting to a degree that made him feel almost ashamed. “I think you’re the only person on Earth who calls me that.” The only person alive anywhere, perhaps.

“Does it bother you?”

“No. Just curious.”

“I know what it’s like to lay claim to a world that isn’t yours and to want to protect it.” Diana’s gaze drifted, sweeping over the bar’s patrons, allowing the dull roar of idle chatter to fill the gap in the conversation. “But I also know that we need to remember who we were before all the masks.” Her eyes returned to Clark’s face, passing over the ridge of his glasses with a faint smile. “Metaphorically.”

Clark made an effort to return the expression and found that it didn’t come as easy this time. “Hey, I was Clark Kent for more than thirty years before Superman was a thing.”

She laid a hand over where his forearm rested on the table, jostling him with a show of strength that caught him off guard. “And Diana Prince was in hiding for three times as long.”

 

Clark put his phone down on the coffee table. This wasn’t anything worth thinking about, but somehow Clark had not been able to think of anything else since he’d done it. As he showered, he thought of the phone on the coffee table and how little effort it would take to pick it back up. As he cooked, he thought of the phone on the coffee table and how much better he’d feel if he just called Bruce and told him that he couldn’t make dinner tomorrow, he’d just have to cancel. As he washed and dried the dishes, he thought of the phone on the coffee table and hearing Alfred’s voice on the other end the last time he’d picked it up. Of course Bruce wouldn’t call him himself and give Clark the chance to ask what the hell was going on. He couldn’t have demanded answers from Alfred any more than he could have said ‘no’, even if he couldn’t fathom why Bruce would want him over as if they were…what? Friends? People who held more for each other than the grudging respect of two colleagues, even if Clark felt like he barely got that sometimes?

The last time they’d seen each other, Batman had dismissed him with a brusqueness that could have read as almost defensive if it hadn’t sounded so impersonal. It had been the closest Clark had come to glimpsing the Bruce Wayne he’d first met – the man with slow, simmering anger in his eyes, only held in check by practiced self-control. The man who probably still would have been willing to call Superman a clown to his face even if he’d known exactly who he was talking to at the time. The man who’d stood toe to toe with Clark and despite every advantage, Clark had flinched first when his words had struck at the heart of every doubt he’d ever let take root inside of him. The first time Clark had been able to see the Bat in the man.

He had filed this man away with all the others that Bruce seemed to wear and cast off like tailored suits, an array of different cuts split down the middle by clear delineation of purpose. On one side, the arrogant, smirking playboy who only ever seemed as smart or as observant as any given situation required him to be. Someone Clark Kent increasingly avoided covering when he could; it was too damn awkward now that he recognized the mask and much easier to maintain the illusion of impartiality when no one gave a damn about his opinion. On the other side…harder to pin down. The avenging shadow that swept over Gotham with ruthless efficiency. The man who believed in heroes with the fervent resolution of a heretic, clutching at a legacy that Clark hadn’t thought to leave. A masked figure driven by righteous fury who Clark’s dreams always painted in green.

Where then to classify the man who’d stared at him from behind the cowl, wide-eyed and stumbling in the sudden absence of certainty – who, when it counted, had saved his mother on nothing more than a name and a promise. What about the man who’d peeked out from behind Bruce Wayne’s carefree dismissal to clap him on the back at his parents’ farm, punctuation to an apology he hadn’t seen coming and still wasn’t sure how to interpret. What of the man who had wryly cracked a joke he hadn’t understood until long after the race, back when Barry Allen had still been little more than a name and a costume – an oddly personal reference he’d picked out of Barry’s characteristic rambling, remembered even after the world had decided not to end after all. Part of him hoped that it was this Bruce that had been responsible for the phone call, wanted to believe that the distance between knowing Bruce Wayne and liking him could be bridged by more than wishful thinking.

Diana had called him her friend; she’d probably applied the same word to Bruce just as easily. The same part of him envied her her generosity.

Clark left the phone where it was.

 

Dinner was somehow both more and less awkward than Clark had anticipated. He felt strangely hot in his suit jacket, but couldn’t bring himself to consider the informality of taking it off. Bruce seemed to be in atypically good humour, shiny smile plastered to his face as he casually inquired about Clark’s work at the _Planet_ and how the Metropolis Giants were making out this season like there was nothing of greater consequence that either of them could have been discussing. Like they were exactly what they appeared to be. It was driving Clark crazy; he couldn’t understand what Bruce was possibly getting out of this. It wasn’t like there was anyone in the room to pretend _for_ , anyone who didn’t already know. Clark half wondered if Bruce was making fun of him by keeping up the pretense, but Bruce had never struck him as a man who enjoyed being mean for the sake of being mean. Whatever unkind things Clark had thought about him and however deserved they sometimes felt, he felt certain that he wasn’t that. Which still left him at a loss – kind, cruel, it seemed Bruce’s intentions were equally inscrutable, no matter the results.

When Alfred began collecting their plates, Clark half rose to help him, chair making an obscenely loud scrape on the polished floors that had his face flooding with red. Alfred pressed him back down into his seat, not physically capable of forcing him, but somehow inexorable regardless. “Absolutely not, Mr. Kent. I appreciate the gesture, but I won’t hear of a guest doing the dishes. Please indulge me in allowing me to do the part of my job that doesn’t involve stitching wounds.” The last was said with a pointed exasperation that shrank Bruce’s smile to something that seemed duller, yet more real. Clark took a hurried sip of his wine, grasping for the excuse not to have seen before he could think better of it.

Bruce’s eyes fell on him, sharp and direct in a way that they hadn’t been all night, but his posture didn’t change. Pointedly loose. Open. Not Batman, then. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.

“To be perfectly honest, neither was I.” Clark watched the thin line of Bruce’s mouth where his smile had been tucked away, maybe for the rest of the evening. It might have been the wrong thing to say, but he didn’t feel like being a part of whatever game Bruce was playing. One of them had to be direct. “Did Diana put you up to this?”

“Diana?” Bruce’s brow wrinkled, eyebrows drawing together in what might have been genuine confusion. It occurred to Clark for the first time since getting the phone call that Diana might not have told Bruce about coming to see him. “No, of course not. Whatever would give you that idea?”

"Just - why am I here, Bruce?"

"I need an ulterior motive to have dinner with a friend?" Perilously close to Diana's words. The lie was even easier to see past with Bruce.

“Last week it was ‘Superman, stay out of Gotham’. Tonight it’s ‘Clark, come over for dinner’.”

“Alfred thinks Clark Kent is a good influence on me.” It wasn’t quite a joke, but it was definitely a deflection. Alfred may have made the call, but whatever uncertainty Clark may have harboured about the invite having been Bruce’s idea had vanished. “A Superman sighting, on the other hand, might attract attention from across the bay that Metropolis isn’t ready for.” Bruce stood smoothly, the stem of his wine glass held in one hand. He used his free hand to clap Clark briefly on the shoulder as he passed. “Keep catching airplanes, Clark. Leave street level thuggery to the veterans.”

Clark stood to follow and tried not to frown. There was a logic to that, but like everything else Bruce had said, it had the air of a careful half-truth. It wasn’t like he was all that keen on confronting Batman’s usual kind of trouble himself; dealing with Luthor’s particular brand of madness aside, he’d never envisioned Superman as a vigilante. Search and rescue, emergency response, chasing off the occasional alien invasion, these were all things that he could do in a way that no one else could. It stood to reason that he could fight crime in a way no one else could just as easily – easier. But he didn’t trust himself to know where to stop. There had to be limits to Superman. Bruce, standing in front of him, pausing to glance over his shoulder at the falter of Clark’s steps, was proof enough that he could get it wrong. “Did you know, LexCorp tried to buy out the airline whose plane almost crashed?”

Bruce’s breath didn’t even stutter, the lines of his shoulder lax and unconcerned. If he was surprised by the direction of Clark’s thoughts, he didn’t show it. “I had been aware of that, yes.”

“Funny coincidence, that. So soon after Arkham.”

“And yet, Lex Luthor hasn't shown up to take credit for either.”

Clark mulled the point over, finding himself agreeing and not liking the conclusion. Luthor was many things, but humble wasn’t one of them. “You think he's got something bigger planned?”

“I think we'll know soon enough.”

There was a cheery thought. Clark’s eyes met Bruce’s and for a moment Clark was almost certain that he knew what Bruce was thinking, something almost blackly humorous passing between them. “Yeah. Guess so.”

Bruce broke his gaze, sliding his free hand into his pocket. “You were right about me, by the way.”

Clark blinked, trying to follow the turn of the conversation. “In what way?”

“I had another motive.” Bruce’s hand returned and tossed something to Clark that he caught easily. A small collection of fabric swatches, weighted by their crisp, professional binding. “For your room in the Hall. I thought you should choose.”

Clark’s breath caught, swiping his thumb over the soft fabric as he tried not to crumple it in his fist. “It’s finished?”

“Almost.” That smaller, dimmer smile resurfaced, a slight pull of the lips. This time, Clark found himself able to return it.

 

Both the _Daily Planet_ and the _Metropolis Star_ would call it an alien invasion. It was a fair enough assumption, if an incorrect one. From what Clark had surmised, the shuttle had taken a wrong turn somewhere and wound up in their solar system by mistake. Unfortunately, the angry passengers had found the accommodations on Earth to be lacking and the culture of Spring Break was apparently universal. They’d decided to trash the place.

Clark had been relieved when Bruce had shown up, the only one close enough that Clark had been certain that he’d respond to his summons. It was much easier to round up a group of surly, super strong teenagers when someone else had taken the initiative to pluck civilians out of the danger zone. Diana, however, had been a nice surprise. Between the two of them, they managed to pack the kids back into the shuttle and extract a promise from the apologetic pilot to steer clear on future trips lest his complaints department wind up with an angry Kryptonian on their hands.

He and Diana both watched the shuttle until it disappeared beyond the clouds; Clark continued to track it for much longer. “Thanks for the help,” he said.

“Of course,” Diana said, winding her lasso and securing it to her waist. “I was in the neighbourhood.”

Clark turned, drawn by the sound of boots touching ground behind him, the swish of a cape, the unwind of a winch inside a grappling gun. Bruce’s body unfolded, the stark black of his costume oddly prominent in the daylight. Clark opened his mouth and found himself without words; he’d honestly expected Bruce to have disappeared the minute the crisis was over. Bruce seemed to have no such issue. “Good work,” he said, Batman’s modulated voice rendering the unexpected praise even more surreal.

“You too,” Clark said.

Bruce stared at him a moment and Clark resisted the urge to stand straighter under the scrutiny. Then he nodded once before turning his attention to Diana. “Got a minute?”

“I believe so,” she said. “Is this about the asset we’ve discussed?”

“It is.”

“Then I’d suggest Superman join us.”

Bruce’s eyes settled on him again, long enough that he expected a refusal. Instead, he simply said: “I agree.”

 

“Just so we’re clear,” Clark said, “we’re talking about Orpheus. Like Greek mythology Orpheus. Journeyed to the underworld to save his wife, but looked back and lost her forever.”

“According to the Greeks, yes,” Diana said. “The legends I grew up with were not nearly so romantic. I like yours better.”

“We spent the afternoon fighting off alien tourists,” Bruce said. “Is this really so unbelievable?” Even as he spoke, Bruce sounded like he barely believed it himself. The monitor light cast harsh shadows over his face, stark even as the rest of the cave swelled with them. Clark had had to work hard not to stare when they’d entered; it didn’t matter how many times he saw the cave, being surrounded by such a monument to Bruce’s career as Batman always knocked the breath out of him. Whatever criticisms you could level against Bruce Wayne, no one could claim that he took any half measures, least of all when it came to dedication to a motif. Clark couldn’t even begin to guess what some of the suits, propped up in display cases like remnants of the world’s strangest chiropterology museum, had ever been used for. He wondered what it must be like to be a man who had dedicated his life so thoroughly to fighting the monsters that lived inside of men, only to discover that the ones under the bed were just as real.

Still, Clark couldn’t deny that they’d all faced down stranger things in the past few years. With Diana sitting in front of them, still dressed in her Amazonian armour, it seemed almost ridiculous to insist on the fictitious nature of mythological beings. “Okay, so we have a lyre that can raise the dead and we suspect we know where it is.” His eyes darted between his two companions, finger tapping out the rhythm of his thoughts against his knee. “But we haven’t gone after it. What am I missing?”

“I had hoped to retrieve it discreetly,” Diana said, “but there was a complication.”

“The collector Diana believes to be in possession of the lyre was a long-time associate of Alexander Luthor Sr.” Bruce pulled up a photo of a severe, grey-haired man on the monitor that Clark assumed was the collector in question. He didn’t look like much, but that hardly meant anything. Especially if they were expected to factor magic into the equation. “Thaddeus Wraith. He’s been quite open about his opposition to vigilante action in recent years.”

“And you think he’d be sympathetic to Luthor, even after breaking out of jail.”

“I think we can’t rule it out.”

“Lex Luthor was researching metahumans, keeping tabs on us. It’s how we found enough members to form the League.” Diana frowned, hands clenching into tight fists in her lap. “We should be prepared if Luthor has given him information to wield against us. I fear that if he possesses an item which might manipulate the souls of the dead, there are elements of my past that he might use to hinder me.”

The sudden swell of alarm Clark felt must have shown on his face because Bruce was already shaking his head, answering his questions before he could ask them. “Luthor might have prepared Wraith for the League, but he wouldn’t have told him about us – about our identities. He’s too proud.”

“How sure of that are you?” Clark had to ask, even as he felt himself relaxing marginally. A guess from Bruce was worth a damn lot, especially if he was confident enough to voice it. Especially when Bruce had as much to lose as he did.

Bruce paused, inclining his head, seeming to give the question genuine consideration. “He doesn’t like to lose,” he finally said, “but he can survive losing to Superman. Losing to a Kansas farm boy is a different matter.”

“And losing to Bruce Wayne?”

Bruce turned his face away with a short exhale, a sigh that might have been a laugh from anyone else. “That’s much worse.”

“There’s a gala next weekend,” Diana said. “Wraith’s on the guest list. He’s likely to have brought the lyre with him; it’s too rare an item to resist showing off.”

Clark quirked an eyebrow. “And we’re crashing this party?”

Bruce’s answering smile hitched up the left side of his mouth without quite touching the right, like it was too lazy to take up his whole face. It was smooth, magazine-glossy, and cocky in a boyish way that should have looked ridiculous on a man of Bruce’s age, but didn’t. If anything, the streaks of grey that marked Bruce’s temples gave it an oddly striking edge – suggested that if he was a sleaze ball, at least he was an experienced one. It was Bruce Wayne™ and while it was nothing a younger Clark Kent would have stashed under his mattress, he could at least maybe see why some people _would_.

“I’ve developed a sudden…appreciation for fine art,” Bruce said. He punctuated the sentence by shooting a rakish look at Diana, propping his chin up with one fist. Diana answered with an impressively dignified snort. It was exactly the kind of aggressive flirtation one would expect from the Bruce Wayne that had so fascinated the tabloids in his youth – and it was so obviously fake that Clark couldn’t even make the effort to feel properly embarrassed over witnessing the display. Bruce paused to clear his throat, smile losing its intensity. “Must be getting rusty. I’ve turned into something of a recluse, other pans in the fire.”

“My employment at the Louvre has secured me a spot on the guestlist,” Diana said. “Bruce has accomplished the same with the assistance of a friend.”

“He’s hardly a friend,” Bruce said, easing back into his seat. “But Evan Blake is exceptionally well-connected within the fine art community and more than happy to help Bruce Wayne get back in the game. The hosting facility, on the other hand, is happy for the chance to ply Wayne with alcohol in the hopes of helping him part with some of his money. It’s win-win.”

“And how do I fit into this?” Clark asked. “I don’t have a lot of playboy artistes in my past to call on, personally.”

“Funny story,” Bruce said and, amazingly, seemed to almost mean it. It was decidedly not reassuring.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“If you’ll recall we met at a party some time ago.” Bruce let the understatement of that sentence hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “Apparently, I was quite taken with your coverage of the event. So much so that I’ve made a request that the _Planet_ assign you to the gala.”

“I – really?” It occurred to Clark, for the first time, that this was something Bruce could do. Wayne Enterprises was a part owner of the _Daily Planet_. It was a convenient excuse. Dangerous, if anyone took note of Bruce’s interest and connected one too many dots, but convenient. “That won’t seem odd to anyone? The Arts and Culture section isn’t exactly my usual bag.”

“I’m eccentric, it’s expected. And,” Bruce said, smile edging into something explicitly salacious, “it helps that you’re not so bad to look at.” Bruce’s eyes passed over Clark in an almost identical replica of the look he’d shot Diana. Clark coughed into his hand, quickly breaking eye contact. It was more affecting than he’d expected to be on the other end of that kind of attention. Assessing, licentious – and, Clark reminded himself, entirely fake. He had the passing inclination to wonder what Bruce was like when his interests were sincere and then hastily discarded the thought.

Clark opened his mouth, voice half-forming a joke about them all being there in service to Bruce’s libido before cracking on the first syllable. He cleared his throat, took a fortifying breath, and tried again. “I, ah, assume there’s more to this plan?”

Bruce leaned forward in his chair, the playboy persona falling away like water before Batman rushed in to fill the gaps. Clark tried not to be too transparent in his relief. “Let me catch you up to speed.”

 

Clark was decidedly out of his element at the gala. People filled the halls, seemingly more interested in critiquing each other than the art that lined the walls. They were blanketed in an array of noises and smells so overwhelming that Clark had to wonder if it was all that pleasant even for people who didn’t have super senses to enhance the experience. Maybe it was all a part of the game, pretending that it didn’t bother them – like bloody knuckles for rich people.

If it was a game, then Bruce and Diana were clearly masters. They had allowed themselves to be swept away by the push and pull of the crowd, a seemingly endless line of handshakes and polite smiles and superficial inquiries about health and fortune, with unflinching confidence. It was no longer enough to passively keep track of them; if Clark had been anyone else, he wasn’t sure how he’d have sought them out in the crowd.

Diana was currently listening to a small, withered man explain the origins of the vase. From what Clark could see, the vase could be best described as…brown. Very brown. And, perhaps, lumpy. Reassuringly, Diana didn’t appear any more impressed, barely feigning interest as she accepted a new glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

Bruce, on the other hand, had surrounded himself with a gaggle of men wearing sharp suits and sharper smiles. Clark didn’t consciously make the decision to watch them, but his attention was drawn back again and again by raucous voices. He frowned, concern twinging somewhere in his gut as he took in the loose circle they’d formed around Bruce, body language a pale mask of camaraderie. Bruce seemed not to notice, blustering through the conversation with an offhand confidence and acting far tipsier than any amount of alcohol Clark had seen him consume could account for. And it was an act, Clark was certain. He marked the subtle, significant, strategic slips Bruce made in the discussion – questions about his business ventures that he could have fielded half-conscious (and maybe even had, knowing his track record). Clark had been on the receiving end often enough to know that Bruce could play a conversation like a battle, but if this was a fight, it was one that Bruce was throwing – deliberately, methodically. Clark still didn’t like how much the other men seemed to delight in seeing him stumble, the condescending lilt to what otherwise could have passed for banter between acquaintances.

The social subtleties of the gala no longer seemed as impenetrable to Clark. There were men like this in every bar in America. There were boys waiting to grow into these men on every playground. And Bruce was an asshole – frequently – and Clark didn’t know what history he might have with the men who leaned too far into his personal space, laughed a little too loudly and far too generously. Even knowing this, even –

Clark’s jaw clenched, teeth creaking at the point of contact. Even knowing what Bruce could be like, Clark was certain that he didn’t deserve this. He wondered what those men would do if they understood exactly who they were talking to.

Bruce slipped away from the conversation, accepting one last backslap from one of his associates. He quickly lost himself in a sea of charcoal grey and navy blue, gait easing into something more solid and deliberate as he moved. He stopped in front of a particularly abstract painting, gazing up at it with bland fascination. When he spoke, he pitched his voice low, barely more than a rumble in his chest. Something clearly meant for Clark’s ears only. “You’re going to draw attention to yourself. You need to relax.” Clark would have had to switch his comm on to dignify the statement with a response, so he didn’t bother. Instead he focused on the calm beat of Bruce’s heart, the slide of fabric as he slipped a hand into the pocket of his waistcoat, and tried to uncurl his own hands from where they’d somehow formed themselves into fists. “The man in the pink tie is in the pocket of the mob; he’s been laundering money. Next week, his finances are going leak. Let him enjoy the party.”

“Petty,” Clark muttered, not without admiration. Bruce didn’t hear him, of course, turning to make a comment on the painting to a young lady who had stopped at his side. There was a sharp click of heels across the floor and Clark turned his attention; while he had been distracted, Diana had broken away from her own conversation partner. She swept a loose hair behind her ear as she walked and Clark heard the telltale crackle of her comm coming online.

“I’ve excused myself to find the ladies’ room,” she said. “Direct me.”

Clark absently reached for his own comm while allowing his eyes to focus downward, gaze searching beyond the marble floor. “There’s a vault in the basement. Only two guards and none until you get down the stairs. Seems odd.” There was a pause as Diana rounded a corner and then the footfalls returned, much softer. Clark only hoped none of the party guests got drunk enough to duck behind a pillar for a little privacy; it would be an odd place to find a pair of Jimmy Choos. Clark kept looking, tried to make out the vault’s contents, found that he couldn’t. Something heavy settled within his gut. “There’s a possibility that the vault is lined with lead.”

A careful breath from Diana. “Good for protecting valuables from radiation.”

“Among other things.” Diana reached the stairwell and continued to move; where else was there for them to go but onward at this point? They’d walked into the gala, knowing that it was likely a trap, but all agreeing that the lyre was too dangerous to be left loose in the world. Worse, and Clark was really starting to dread that it might be the case, if Luthor really was involved. “One of the guards keeps moving; you might be able to just slip past him. The other one’s at the end of a long, straight hallway. How do you want to handle this?”

“Gently,” Diana said, in a voice that wasn’t gentle at all.

Clark opened his mouth to respond, but was cut short by a spike in Bruce’s heartbeat – a moment of surprise that, from Bruce, was a shrieking alarm bell. He hadn’t engaged his comm; whatever it was, Bruce hadn’t intended for it to distract from their mission. Clark let it draw his attention anyway, searching for Bruce within the crowd. He heard him before he saw him, catching the midpoint of a conversation.

“–very powerful friends as well,” a man’s voice said, somewhere close to Bruce. The hitch in Bruce’s breathing was so slight as to be unnoticeable to anyone else, but it made Clark’s assessment of the potential threat ratchet up a few levels regardless.

“What can I say, Thaddeus: I’m charming.”

“Personal experience begs to differ.”

Bruce looked relaxed at a casual glance, shoulders loose and smile fixed, conversing with a man who Clark identified instantly as Thaddeus Wraith. The only obvious tells that anything was amiss were the lack of answering smile on Wraith’s face and the way that two men flanked them, clearly not a part of the conversation but too close for casual happenstance. Clark recognized one of them as having been with the group that had encircled Bruce earlier. He was holding his jacket in a way that looked off even before Clark used his x-ray vision to get a good look at the gun, carefully angled so that Bruce would see it and no one else. The urge to say ‘I told you so’ was strong, but less so than the need to put an end to whatever was going on right now. He was keenly aware that he could be across the room in seconds – less.

As if sensing Clark’s thoughts, Bruce’s gaze darted briefly through the crowd, one finger casually hooking into the knot of his tie to loosen it. As his hand fell away, the top button of his shirt lay conspicuously open.

“Are you uncomfortable, Mr. Wayne? Perhaps we should take a walk.”

“Well, I could do with some fresh air.”

“Yes, there are always too many people at these things. A business discussion between gentlemen should take place in private, don’t you agree?”

“If I meet any gentlemen, I’ll have to let you know.”

When Wraith wrapped an arm around Bruce’s shoulders, Bruce bore it without flinching. Clark didn’t see whatever expression must have crossed Bruce’s face, but he did see the way Wraith blanched in response, the way he almost reflexively jerked his arm back before steadying himself and leading Bruce away. Clark tried to hold on to that small reassurance as he pushed through the crowd in search of privacy. Wraith wasn’t expecting the Gotham Bat, wasn’t expecting Bruce to be dangerous. He didn’t know. Clark wasn’t actually sure if that put Bruce in more danger or less.

Clark had barely flipped the lock on the main door to the bathroom before he started shucking off his shirt, the crest of the House of El reflected in the clean glass of the rectangular mirrors. Wraith was at the gala, which they had expected. He wanted something with Bruce Wayne, which they had not. Something alone, away from the crowd. With a gun. “Diana,” he said, “we’ve got a problem.”

Clark frowned at the silence he received in answer. It made perfect sense that she may not have been free to respond, but he was abruptly and worryingly aware that there wasn’t any sound coming through the comm. That…wasn’t normal. And it wasn’t like Diana. He reached out with his senses, searching for her below the gallery floor. His heart clenched when he came up empty. It was like she wasn’t even there. God, even a lead-lined vault wouldn’t stop him from hearing her heartbeat.

He nearly tore his shirt in two, twisting it in his hands as he was caught between two possible paths. Something had gone very, very wrong and both Diana and Bruce were caught in the blast radius of whatever it was. The things that Clark could do, those things that had set him apart for most of his life, had become a source of both unexpected joy and humbling responsibility with the realization of how much good he could do. But even he couldn’t be in two places at once and the minute Superman showed his face, the element of surprise would be gone. He could go after either of them – punch through the floor or speed out the back door – but he might only get the chance to save one.

When he put it like that, there was no question really. Even if Diana wasn’t impossibly strong, even if she hadn’t assuredly faced down much worse than whatever Luthor and Wraith had cooked up for them, even if Bruce wasn’t only human despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, Clark’s decision had been made the moment that Bruce had reminded him to change on the gala floor. The meaning of the gesture had been clear (and he understood all too well why it couldn’t be Clark Kent of the _Daily Planet_ rescuing Bruce Wayne), but that was less significant than the intention behind it. It had been explicit permission for Superman to intervene; Bruce had been asking for help. It was as unlikely as it was terrifying. For that reason, Clark didn’t let the cold horror of the decision he was making stop him. He went after Bruce.

The thought of the precious seconds that Clark might have had to spend searching for Bruce after he’d allowed Wraith to take him wherever someone who dealt in ancient magical artifacts took kidnapped billionaires had weighed on him, but as it turned out, they hadn’t gone that far at all. From the scene that Clark saw as he arrived, it had still been too long regardless. Bruce was on his knees in the damp grass, one arm hanging at an awkward angle. One of the men who had been with Wraith stood behind him, face newly bloodied. He had one hand fisted in Bruce’s hair, tilting his head back until the exposed line of his throat became an arch. The other hand held a gun pressed hard to Bruce’s temple. Wraith stood in front of them, clutching a lyre – _the_ lyre, almost certainly – in an almost manic grip. A half dozen men in various states of consciousness lay scattered across the ground.

Another second and the man who had formerly been holding Bruce joined them, his gun reduced to crumpled metal in Clark’s fist.

Wraith quailed as Clark loomed over him, letting the bearing of his strength bleed into his posture. Wraith’s fist, however, remained determinedly wrapped around the curved wooden sides of the lyre, even as Clark held out one of his own hands with an expectantly open palm. “Hand it over, Wraith. We’re done here.”

Wraith shook his head, pulling the instrument closer to his chest like a petulant child while his eyes remained wide and fixed on Clark with sober understanding. “I can’t,” he said, voice barely a rasp. “It’s already started. I can’t.”

Clark tried not to let the chill that settled over his shoulders infect his voice. “What’s started? Wraith, what have you done?” In answer, Wraith merely looked somewhere past Clark. When he turned himself, he saw Bruce, kneeling where he’d been left as if still held there. Bruce’s breathing was slow, but shallow – heartbeat slow enough to have been mistaken for calm, if it wasn’t still slowing. “What have you done?” Clark repeated. His voice didn’t even sound angry; he’d moved somewhere beyond that.

Wraith licked his lips, blinking heavily. “What was necessary.”

Taking the lyre from Wraith was child’s play; his best attempt at holding it only served to make him fall ass over teakettle when he was forced to let go. Not hitting him, on the other hand, felt like an almost superhuman act of will. Clark couldn’t hit him because in that moment, he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t hit him too hard, could barely conceive of hard enough. Clark shoved the lyre awkwardly under one arm, hurriedly falling to his knees next to Bruce. “Bruce?” Bruce remained still and unresponsive even as Clark gently gripped and turned his face. His eyes were open, but almost looked glazed in appearance, lacking any sign of his usual watchful intelligence, of the spirit that drove him. While the sound of Bruce’s heartbeat was alarming, it was nothing compared to the way Clark’s senses were screaming at him as he knelt in front of Bruce like this. He smelled wrong in some instinctual, almost animalistic way that Clark couldn’t explain, but felt the panic of anyway. He smelt like death.

Behind them, Wraith’s breath was shaky, afraid, and – somehow almost anticipatory. Clark’s eyes narrowed, his mind seizing on a sudden suspicion. He pulled his hands away from Bruce, leaving him in the position Clark’s hands had moved him to, and considered the weight of the lyre underneath his arm. He took a moment to consider the potential flaws of his chosen course of action. It was probably a bad idea, but god, if he lost Bruce now. If he left Diana behind, but was too late to save Bruce anyway. It was unacceptable, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lose both his friend and whatever Bruce was to him now – the singular, frustrating presence that had somehow become a fixture in his life. He knew what role Bruce’s single-minded determination had played in his own resurrection and wondered if he’d be able to pull off the same if their roles were reversed. He grabbed the instrument in both hands and smashed it.

Bruce collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut. Clark nearly joined him seconds later, struck with a wave of wooziness that had him bracing his hands against the ground. Even as Clark tried to gain control of his own breathing, he could hear Bruce’s breath evening out into something that more closely resembled sleep than whatever horrifying state of suspended animation he’d been trapped in before. If Clark hadn’t already been dizzy, the relief would have been enough to get him there. It was with vicious, vehement satisfaction that Clark mentally told magic to go fuck itself.

Clark heaved Bruce into his arms and took a stumbling step forward, finding the weight harder to bear than he’d expected. Sweat beaded on his brow as he walked the length of the lawn at a slow plodding pace. He had – what was he doing? Bruce’s head lolled limply against his shoulder and Clark glanced down, brow furrowing. Why was he walking? He’d had a better way to do this. He’d –

Clark looked up. Diana was running barefoot across the grass, hair flying loose in the moonlight. Clark opened his mouth to call to her and had to shut it against a sudden rush of vertigo. He clutched Bruce tighter, taking deep, gasping breaths as he fought back the sensation of falling. And then everything went black. 

 

Clark was no stranger to troubled awakenings. Nightmares had followed him in various forms throughout his life, plucking new elements from the fears he carried on his back and, most devastatingly, from the horrors that had actually come to pass. His father in the storm, one hand raised. Black Zero. Lois running, falling, staring down the barrel of a gun. A bomb, a courthouse, and Superman too late to do anything about it. Pictures of his mother littering the roof as Clark knelt at Luthor’s feet. Bruce and kryptonite and a boot on his neck. Doomsday. Sometimes even his own grave, forced to claw his way out of the earth, even if he knew that events transpired differently in life. The nightmare he woke up to, however, had been torn from the desperate uncertainty of his childhood.

Clark had barely opened his eyes before he had to force them shut again, twisting his face back toward the pillow. His ears rang with buzzing electronics and hearts beating in staccato anti-rhythm and the blare of sirens somewhere in the distance and the squall of birds overhead. His head was splitting under the pressure of his senses gone haywire. He wanted to scream, but was terrified to add to the sound. He thought he might have been dying.

And then it stopped.

Clark blinked into the suddenly bearable light, forcing calm into his own breaths until he stopped vibrating the bed underneath him. He was in what looked like a medical facility of some sort. Machines hummed and chirped around him, still intrusive but no longer unbearably so. The much more pressing concern was that he had no idea where he was.

He shifted slightly and felt the tug of his cape as it caught underneath him. Well, that was one worry down. As a rule, doctors didn’t generally mix well with either Clark Kent or Superman, but at least Superman didn’t raise any eyebrows when his skin snapped needles. Superman also went a long way toward explaining what sort of circumstance might have rendered him unconscious, maybe even injured considering his surroundings, even if the memory of the precise explanation fled from his grasp.

There was a shuffling sound from one corner of the room. Clark turned his head, startled, senses still shocky, almost skittish. Arthur’s face was smooth as he stood up from the chair he’d been resting in, so carefully placid as to give him away more than open wariness would. He had one hand wrapped around his trident. “You good?”

“I dunno,” Clark said honestly. He tried to take stock, but couldn’t seem to piece together any obvious clues. He was weaker than normal, but not so much as to suggest a kryptonite encounter. One of his arms kind of tingled, a light numbness that was almost like static, but nothing actually hurt. And Clark was still dressed as Superman, but Arthur wore nothing more formal than a comfortable-looking sweater. “You’re not wearing the shiny suit.”

“That ‘shiny suit’ belonged to the first ruler of Atlantis. It’s also a hell of a lot more practical than your get up.” Arthur visibly relaxed, rolling his shoulders back as he stepped towards Clark. “Why would a guy who can fly wear a cape? It’s the opposite of aerodynamic.”

“Hey, you justify it however you want. Truth is you’re wearing a silly outfit, just like the rest of us.”

“We waited this long for one of you to finally be conscious – don’t make me knock you out again.” The words were meant as a joke, something to put Clark at ease, but they did just the opposite. Clark’s body made a valiant attempt to jackknife into a sitting position, but the numb arm dragged weirdly and his head spun with the aftershocks of whatever had plagued him when he’d awoken. Arthur moved quickly, leaning his trident against the bed as he attempted to force Clark back down. “Hey, easy. I don’t know where it is you’ve gotta go, but it can wait until the boss clears you.”

“Boss?” Clark asked, adrenaline still flooding his system in response to his half-remembered panic. Grass and moonlight and the painful curve of Bruce’s throat and silence where a heartbeat should have been.

“Diana.”

Clark blinked rapidly, the relief of that one word overwhelming him. “She’s alive.” It wasn’t a question. Thank god it wasn’t a question. “How is she?”

“Better than you.” Arthur seemed reluctant to pull his hands away completely, hovering awkwardly. He cleared his throat. “I mean, she’s fine. She’s Diana. She wasn’t the one who wound up on the wrong end of some dark ritual or whatever the fuck.”

“Bruce,” Clark said. Arthur looked away, jaw clenching against some emotion that made his heartbeat thrum. Clark felt all of his relief rush away, leaving him lightheaded and choking in its absence. “He’s – he’s not –”

“No,” Arthur said, voice firm and unhappy. “No, he’s alive.”

‘Alive’ wasn’t always the same as ‘fine’. Especially where Bruce was concerned. “Can I see him?”

“I don’t know that you should be up and moving around. You were down for the count, Clark. Does it even register to you how scary that is?”

Clark felt strangely small, sitting on the bed, looking to Arthur for reassurance and finding none. “Please,” he said.

Arthur stared at him for a moment longer and then sighed. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be the easier one to watch.”

 

It didn’t take long after leaving the room for Clark to crack the mystery of his location. It was easy to overlay his current surroundings on the memory of Wayne Manor’s distinctive architecture, even if it had been considerably transformed since he’d last seen it. It was hard not to stare at the table that dominated the main hall as they passed it, but he made a valiant effort. These weren’t the circumstances he’d wanted for his first impression.

“Why isn’t Bruce in the medical wing?”

Arthur grunted, starting the climb up the stairs to the second floor. “Nothing medical about it. There’s nothing _wrong_ with him.” That wasn’t the whole truth and they both knew it. Nothing had been ‘wrong’ with Clark either. He thought of Arthur’s hand wrapped around his trident in the corner of the room and wondered what it was that they had expected.

Clark allowed him to lead the rest of the way in silence, disquieted. Entering Bruce’s room did nothing to dispel the feeling of unease. Bruce lay in the center of the bed, for all appearances sleeping, but still and lax in a way that Clark found hard to reconcile with a man who always seemed to hover on the precipice of action. His feet moved him forward almost without thought or intent on his own part. He kept expecting something to happen – that Bruce would crack one eye open or that the Bat’s growl would demand an explanation for their trespass. Nothing.

Clark stood at the edge of the bed, watching the even, almost mechanically consistent rise and fall of Bruce’s chest. ‘Nothing wrong’, Arthur had said, but it was clear now that everything was. Magic. Clark had been too late after all, in every way that mattered.

“I’ll give you a moment,” Arthur said. Clark barely marked the quiet click of the door.

He sat down at some point. He couldn’t remember doing it, but he could feel the shaky exhaustion in his legs and knew he wasn’t getting back up any time soon. “I still don’t know how I feel about the whole trying-to-kill-me thing, but you brought me back, so I guess we’re even.” Clark swallowed hard around the forced cheer he’d put into his voice, throat thick with it. “That means if I have to save you now, you’re gonna owe me one. I know you’d hate that.

“So, if you’re going to wake up on your own, you should do it soon. Fair warning.”

 

The world was flooded in sick green, narrowing Clark’s vision until all he could see was the living darkness looming above him. There was a pressure on his neck and he struggled to breathe past it. His body sang with pain like he’d never experienced before, but it was nothing compared to the intolerable helplessness, the inevitability of his own failure. Clark fought to force words through his throat, but the boot only pressed harder as Bruce brought the spear down.

In the periphery of his vision, pearls rolled across the floor.

 

Clark’s return to awareness was not a slow, controlled experience. The dream was gone, torn away like curtains pulled open to reveal the sunlight. He was all at once keenly aware of the jackhammer of his own heart, paradoxically slow to catch up with the rest of him, and the echo of another rapid heartbeat lying beside him. “Bruce?” His voice was sleep-rough, but strong, emboldened by sudden certainty as he forcibly oriented himself. He’d lay down on the bed, fallen asleep somehow, and in the intervening time, Bruce had woken up.

Clark jolted, body singing with a renewed rush of adrenaline. Bruce had woken up. “You’re awake,” he said, helpfully.

Bruce grunted in response. Clark felt more than saw the way that he tensed as he manoeuvred himself to something closer to sitting. Clark saw more than felt the way that he brought the heel of one hand up to brace against his forehead. “How long have you been here?” No ‘what happened’. Not ‘how long have I been out’. ‘How long have you been here’.

Clark swallowed. “Not long.” He paused, retraced his answer, made an amendment. “I don’t think it’s been that long. I didn’t mean to fall asleep here.”

“You must be tired,” Bruce said, the words neutral and delivered without recrimination.

Clark laughed, high and strained with disbelief. “Yeah, I guess I must be. What about you?”

Bruce frowned, hand dropping from his forehead to knead at his shoulder, sucking in a tense breath at the contact. Clark felt a thrum of phantom discomfort in his own tingling arm, as if in sympathy. “I’m fine.”

“Sure, you are.” Clark shook his head, letting his breath gust out of him. There was an odd pressure starting somewhere in his temple; he ignored it. “Christ, Bruce.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “If you have something to say, Clark.”

Clark grit his teeth as the pressure in his head spiked. A warm flood of heat rolled through him, making his muscles sing with tension. He was angry, suddenly. Frustrated. And didn’t know where that anger had come from. A part of him clung to it gratefully; Bruce was so much easier to deal with when he was angry. “No, of course not. Why would we ever bother talking about anything, Bruce?”

“Clark –”

“Shut up.” The words exploded like they’d been punched out of him. He clasped his head in his hands, squeezing as if he could somehow physically push the pressure away. “Just don’t say anything if you’re not going to be honest with me.”

A hand touched on his wrist. Clark tried to shake it off, but Bruce was insistent. Clark could have made him stop, forced his hand away with a strength that Bruce couldn’t hope to overcome, but they both knew that he wouldn’t. Clark felt the certainty of it in the way that Bruce’s hands slid gently over his own before questing into his hairline. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know.” Clark shuddered as Bruce’s thumb ran over his temple, eyes flinching shut. The anger was still there, a constant current of his tension under his skin, but it had been tempered by something else now. Fear, concern, and a determined sort of focus that had Clark carefully analyzing his own symptoms. “I’ve got…I think it’s a headache?”

“A headache,” Bruce said slowly. His fingers scraped against the back of Clark’s skull before digging in, flexing against points of pressure that Clark had barely been able to catalogue. Clark tried not to groan over how good it felt; he didn’t think that’d be welcome. “Do you actually get those?”

“Not often.” One of Bruce’s hands moved lower, cupping the back of his neck, thumb rubbing in precise, circular motions. Clark swallowed, knew Bruce felt it, and somehow that small detail was a thousand times more intimate than anything else that was already happening. Still, the feelings of concern didn’t abate – Clark’s brow furrowed as he tried to place the source of his own anxiety. “There’s something else. Something’s…not right. I don’t feel like myself.”

Bruce’s hands stilled and the concern intensified. “What do you mean?”

Clark opened his eyes, letting them adjust to the dark of the room until Bruce’s face came into focus. Bruce looked calm, expression flawlessly smooth. Clark didn’t even need to listen for his heartbeat to know that it was an act. “What was Wraith doing to you?”

Bruce’s hands jerked away and Clark had to physically resist the impulse to follow. Loss panged through him and he understood where that came from, even if he didn’t feel equipped to deal with what it represented at the moment. But there was an odd undercurrent of guilt as well and that – that he had no reason for. But he still felt it. “I’m fine,” Bruce said again, like repetition made it true.

“No, you’re not,” Clark said. “But I don’t think that I am either.”

 

The debrief with the rest of the League felt unduly long. Usually Clark enjoyed them or, at least, enjoyed what they represented; he liked being a part of something. It was just hard to focus on what Victor was saying about Wraith’s offshore bank accounts when he couldn’t take his eyes off of Bruce and, specifically, the pen Bruce was holding. Clark kept absently flexing his own hand, wondering if he felt the pressure of the pen between his own thumb and forefinger or if it was just because he could see Bruce holding it. It was hard to tell without any clear idea what was and was not possible.

A warm hand laid itself over his knee and it took Clark a second to connect the sensation with Diana sitting beside him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize how magic would impact your powers. It was careless of me to assume that it wouldn’t.”

Clark shrugged, forcing himself to smile. “It’s hardly your fault. How could we have known?”

She shook her head. “Even so, I should have turned back as soon as the comm ceased functioning, found out what was going on. When I saw what was inside of the vault and understood the truth of Wraith’s intentions, I feared the consequences of making that choice.” Her eyes moved toward Bruce here and Clark’s followed, irresistibly. Bruce was hunched over, examining the Diana’s detailed drawing of the shrine she had found inside of the vault, cloaked by magic rather than lead. Apparently raising the dead wasn’t nearly as free or easy as the myths made it sound. He seemed totally absorbed, but he was listening – Clark knew he was. “I should apologize to you as well, Bruce. I didn’t realize that Wraith would target you.”

Bruce’s eyes flicked up and then down again. His thumb slid over the side of the pen. “Would you have told me not to come if you had?”

Diana laughed sharply. “Would you have listened if I did?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. Wraith would have found another opportunity.”

“Are we sure that he was targeting Bruce specifically?” Barry asked. “I mean, not that he couldn’t be, Bruce Wayne gets targeted a lot – because of the rich thing, not the Batman thing. But Wraith is already rich and there were a lot of people there and it’s just –” Barry paused, eyes darting between them uncertainly. “I mean, it could have been anybody, right?”

“No,” Bruce said and Clark felt his conviction like iron manacles. “It had to be me.”

 

When Diana found him again later, Clark was sitting on a cot in the medical wing, waiting with determined patience as Bruce did…something to himself inside a lead-lined room. Clark understood the point behind the tests – he had agreed to them, after all. He wanted to understand what had happened to them as much as Bruce did. But the few answers they had managed to pull together had been discouragingly front-loaded.

Bruce’s most pressing concern had been the transfer of physical sensation. Clark had agreed with most of that concern, both from a practical day-to-day perspective and with respect to the kind of danger they both regularly faced in their costumed identities. Clark imagined facing down a threat like Zod or Doomsday knowing that Bruce would feel every hit he took and shuddered. It turned out not to be quite so dire. Clark could feel physical sensation from Bruce only if Bruce was focused on its source. If he wasn’t, then even Bruce’s shoulder, which Clark was horrified to discover was a colourful mass of bruising over top of a recently set dislocation, at worst left Clark with the odd, tingling sensation that he’d been mostly ignoring all day. With a few moments of meditation, Bruce could eliminate even that.

On the other hand, Bruce couldn’t seem to feel anything from Clark no matter what they tried. Clark wondered, but didn’t dare ask, if it was because there was something inherently different about him. Either because he wasn’t human or…or because of what had happened to him. If the lyre affected souls, he had to wonder if there wasn’t something out of place with his own.

The issue of feeling each other’s emotions was the same in that respect, if much more complicated. Bruce denied feeling anything from Clark, but Clark was receiving a steady stream of input from Bruce that neither of them had been able to do much more than temporarily stymie. Clark could see that it bothered Bruce, was almost unable to do anything other than feel how much it bothered Bruce. Clark got it, he really did; Bruce was a private man and it was entirely predictable that anyone (perhaps, least of all Clark) having a direct line to his head wasn’t something that would ever sit well with him. But Clark still wished that Bruce could have had the courtesy to be a little less bothered when Clark was still trying to process his own feelings on the matter. In hindsight, those moments in Bruce’s room when Clark hadn’t been able to separate Bruce’s emotions from his own were newly terrifying.

The stream of inconclusive, repetitive testing that had followed was wearing on Clark’s nerves and he was getting frustrated. Worse, he could feel that Bruce was getting frustrated and that made Clark’s frustration balloon into something nearly unmanageable. That, at least, suggested that lead did nothing to block this whatever it was; there was something he could share with Bruce whenever he felt like coming back.

Diana sat next to him, though she was already dressed in a long overcoat – clearly on her way out. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.” The words came out terser than he’d meant them. He took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m okay. Thanks, Diana.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Clark’s shoulder blades itched and he wondered if it was Bruce’s discomfort or his own. “I was remiss in pursuing the lyre with an incomplete understanding of the power it wielded,” Diana said. “I’m going to remedy that. I will, of course, tell you of anything that I find.”

Clark sighed. “I’d appreciate that. I’d settle for even knowing how this happened.”

“I had been thinking about that, actually. What were you thinking of when you held the lyre?” Clark wasn’t certain what expression crossed his face, but Diana reached out, grabbing his hand firmly. “I’m sorry. That was tactless of me.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s a reasonable question, don’t know why it caught me so off-guard.” Clark closed his eyes briefly, casting his mind back and trying not to flinch from his own thoughts. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want Bruce to die, I guess.”

Diana pursed her lips. “I think he did.”

“Pardon me?”

The expression Diana turned on him was filled with an awful kind of sympathy. “I think Bruce was dead when you found him.”

Clark felt the blood drain from his face, fists clenching involuntarily. The metal railing of the bed groaned under his fingers and he hastily extracted his other hand from Diana’s, though she didn’t seem to mind. “No. No, he – he was breathing. I could hear his heartbeat.” The words were almost pleading.

“Soul magic isn’t always clean in its application. But the lyre only calls to the souls of the dead. I think Wraith killed Bruce, but you brought him back.”

When Bruce returned to the medical bay, Clark was laughing. It was a little too loud, edged with faint hints of hysteria, but it was genuine. What went around really did come around.

 

As unprecedented as it was, the connection he’d formed with Bruce didn’t really change much about their relationship. That was the problem, actually.

Clark glared at his word processor as he erased his opening line for the fifth time in ten minutes. He had been trying very hard not to think about Bruce, but that was easier said than done when Bruce couldn’t seem to stop thinking for even five seconds. It was constant – at work, at night, in the shower, while flying over Metropolis. Clark didn’t know how Bruce lived with this constant agitation buzzing under his skin. It was maddening.

In some ways, it was like being a kid again. Only a tenuous grip on his powers. Super senses flying off the handle at the smallest provocation. Completely out of control. Overwhelmed.

Clark leaned back in his chair, closing his laptop and giving up for the evening. He couldn’t go on like this. Something had to give and he was willing enough for it to be on his part. But that still required Bruce to talk to him first.

 

Gotham City had an undeniably pretty skyline, especially at night. Unfortunately, words like ‘quiet’ or ‘serene’ never applied long enough for Clark to find it enjoyable. On the street below, Batman stood outlined by the headlight of a revving motorcycle. The rider was swinging, of all things, what appeared to be a medieval flail. Clark floated politely out of eyeline; he could wait for Bruce to finish up before ambushing him.

The motorcycle revved again before starting forward in a squeal of tires. Bruce paused in a moment of incongruent disinterest, glancing upwards. Clark heard Bruce’s sigh like an accusation. Busted, then.

The motorcycle man lost some of his bravado when, instead of dodging out of the way, the Batman ran straight at him. With less than a foot of distance between them, Bruce dropped into a slide, foot kicking out with calculated precision, sending the motorcycle careening off-course. Clark winced a little sympathetically as both metal and flesh impacted with the wall. And then Bruce’s furious attention rounded on him.

Clark didn’t flinch from his spot when then grapnel flew past him, Bruce pulling himself toward the roof with practiced efficiency. He landed heavily, cape flourishing, before leveling Clark with a truly sour glare. “What are you doing here?”

Clark crossed his arms, settling his feet firmly on the roof. He raised an eyebrow in challenge. “I need an excuse to visit a friend?” He tried not to smile too much at Bruce’s answering growl and the flash of annoyance that sparked over their connection. He mostly failed. “We need to talk.”

Bruce turned away, winding up his grapnel. “So, talk.”

“It’s usually more of a two-way street than that,” Clark said. Bruce glanced over his shoulder, but said nothing. Stubborn. Clark sighed. “How have you been, Bruce?”

“You should already know.”

“I’m asking.”

Flatly: “I’m fine.”

“Really.” Clark let the word ease out in a drawl. “Because I haven’t been sleeping all that well.”

“Do you even need to sleep?” Bruce’s voice was still carefully even, but Clark could feel the edge of genuine curiosity underneath. It felt a little like cheating with Bruce standing in front of him, trying so hard to shore transparent walls.

Clark shrugged. “I enjoy it.”

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, then.”

“I didn’t really come here for an apology.” Clark slowly lowered himself into a sitting position, waiting patiently until Bruce joined him. The stars weren’t as bright against the glare of the city’s lights, but they persisted anyway. He idly wondered if Bruce had ever been interested in seeing space. “But you knew that.”

“You didn’t really come here to ask me how I’ve been either.” A faint pulse of amusement, warm and pleasant. Clark wondered if he’d have been able to identify it from Bruce’s heartbeat and breathing alone.

“I want to know what Wraith said to you. Why Bruce Wayne?”

“It doesn’t matter. Let it go.”

“I can’t,” he said, “because you won’t.”

Bruce stared at him for a long moment, eyes hard and glittering beneath the cowl. “You wouldn’t anyway.”

Clark conceded the point. “Probably not, no.” He grinned. “Pretty sure I’m not the only one with issues letting things go.”

Bruce exhaled and Clark felt the echo of his unease settle somewhere in his own chest. It was almost enough to make him want to back off. He couldn’t. “Death has followed Bruce Wayne his whole life,” Bruce said, presenting the words like a confession. Like something Clark might judge him for. Clark knew the story of Bruce’s tragedy, of course. Everyone did. It struck Clark how lonely that must have made him, all that knowing. “Wraith thought it meant something.”

“What about you?” Clark shifted his weight, leaning so that he could get a better look at Bruce’s face. He forced his attention away from the current of emotion that didn’t belong to him. He wanted to hear this in Bruce’s own words. “Do you think it means something?”

Bruce stared out at the city, resolute. “I think it means what you make it mean.”

 

Bruce Wayne was a hard man to get to know, mostly in ways that were entirely intentional. The billionaire. The Bat. The third man who Bruce only rarely ever let himself be, only visible through the occasional crack in either set of armour. Hard to see.

Clark was a reporter. He knew how to work a story from multiple angles.

He was learning to reassess the conclusions he’d already drawn – trying to do a little less knowing, for both their sakes. He thought that maybe Bruce was trying too. In his own way.

Things didn’t get easier over night, even if they maybe understood each other a little better. He was pretty sure that Wraith’s words still stuck with Bruce. He felt the spectre of them in the middle of night sometimes, either in the sleepless dark or when the memory of Lex Luthor loomed above him on the rooftop, changing the script to remind him that death was his only legacy. To be fair, Bruce’s words stuck with him nearly as much. ‘The world doesn’t make sense unless you force it to’. Death ‘means what you make it mean’. There was something Clark could have admired about that, a man’s drive to reshape the world with his own two hands. Dangerous if you got it wrong, but that was what made Bruce a man worth trusting – he knew that better than anyone. Whereas men like Luthor weaponized blame, turned it on anyone who didn't fit their narrative, Bruce carried the weight of his failures on his back. He wore his losses like a suit of armour. Literally, in some respects. And he learned from his mistakes, took those lessons to heart even if they bore him down. Clark was keenly aware that his own name had become attached to one of those mistakes and he understood because it was one he shared responsibility for. But he was increasingly aware of all the other names he shared the space with.

He’d often tried to wrap his head around Bruce’s insistence on bringing him back, had never suspected it might be because he just didn’t know how to mourn. It wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed the only non-bat-themed suit in the cave before, hadn’t read the yellow letters and understood what they were referencing. He read the news, he knew the story. Followed by death, indeed. Clark wondered what meaning Bruce had tried to carve out of that tragedy. Clark wondered if his own suit would have found a place in Bruce’s cave – somewhere Bruce could see it as he worked, surrounding himself with mementos of his own regret. The thought made something in his gut clench. He didn’t want to be just one more stick Bruce could use to beat himself.

His first mistake had been going in with a bias. It was an amateur move, bad journalism. You didn’t go in with a story and set out to prove it – you had to uncover it, let it reveal itself. Sometimes the strange connection the lyre had left them with felt like doing the job with one hand tied behind his back, but he made it work. Bruce revealed himself in constant, small ways, now that Clark knew how to look for them.

Clark watched Bruce spar with Diana and ignored the way it made his heart pound with borrowed adrenaline. Instead, he focused on the powerful rhythm of Bruce’s movements, an agility that didn’t sacrifice weight. He focused on the number of times that Bruce moved in close enough to grapple, even if it didn’t afford him any advantage; he focused on the way it made Diana grin every time. He ignored the way his own back twinged when Bruce sat down after, focused on the way Bruce almost seemed satisfied in the aftermath. He focused on the small, suppressed edge of Bruce’s smile when he asked if Barry wanted the mat next, even if it resulted in a flash of lightning and the two of them alone in the training room.

“I’ll spar with you,” Clark said.

“Hardly seems fair,” Bruce said, but he was still doing that little almost smile. Something warm unfurled in Clark’s chest and he couldn’t tell which of them it came from; for once, he didn’t mind.

“I’ll take it easy on you.” Clark stripped off his hoodie, draping it over the back of a chair. Then for good measure he added: “Old man.”

Bruce scowled at him and stepped back onto the mat. Clark grinned, gamely ducking the first fist Bruce threw. Close range right from the start. He let Bruce lead him around the mat, finding it harder to dodge the blows without leaning into unfair advantages in ability than he’d expected. He caught Bruce’s wrist in his hand, grinning as he tried and failed to free himself. Okay, maybe he didn’t mind cheating just a little bit. And then Bruce looked up at him, heart beating just a little out of time, and smiled back.

Bruce grabbed him by the other shoulder, rolling backwards and dragging Clark with him, helpless to do anything but play along. Bruce tucked one foot under his thigh and used their momentum to flip Clark over until he was staring at the ceiling with Bruce leaning over his chest. “That was just –” Clark took a heaving breath he didn’t need, enjoying the almost viciously content feeling that sang through him. Bruce was gazing down at him, sweaty hair flopping onto his forehead. He looked better than he had any right to. “– unfair.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn, son.” Bruce smoothed one palm over his neck. Clark shivered, knowing that if he could hear the gallop of Bruce’s heart, then Bruce could feel his just as well.

Clark raised his own hands to rest on either side of Bruce’s face, stubble tickling at his palms. He licked his lips, hesitating, knowing exactly what Bruce was feeling and still wanting to hear it in his own words. “You’re going to have to tell me if you want this.”

Bruce looked down at him for a moment longer – Batman’s intensity living within his eyes, Bruce Wayne’s confidence lurking within the curve of his smile. And something else. When Bruce leaned down to kiss him, Clark gladly met him half way.


End file.
